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Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics

Steven J. Gortler

August 23, 2011

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics 2
S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

To A.L.G., F.J.G, and O.S.G.
Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics ii
S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

Contents

Preface ix

I Getting Started 1

1 Introduction 3
1.1 OpenGL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Linear 9
2.1 Geometric Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Vectors, Coordinate Vectors, and Bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 Linear Transformations and 3 by 3 Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.4 Extra Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Rotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.6 Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3 Affine 21
3.1 Points and Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Affine transformations and Four by Four Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3 Applying Linear Transformations to Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.4 Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.5 Putting Them Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.6 Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4 Respect 29

iii
CONTENTS CONTENTS

4.1 The Frame Is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

4.2 Multiple Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

5 Frames In Graphics 35
5.1 World, Object and Eye Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2 Moving Things Around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.3 Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.4 Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

6 Hello World 3D 45
6.1 Coordinates and Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.2 Drawing a Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.3 The Vertex Shader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.4 What Happens Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.5 Placing and Moving With Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

II Rotations and Interpolation 57

7 Quaternions (a bit technical) 59

7.1 Interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
7.2 The Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.3 Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.4 Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.5 Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
7.6 Putting Back the Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

8 Balls: Track and Arc 73

8.1 The Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
8.2 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

9 Smooth Interpolation 77
9.1 Cubic Bezier Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

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CONTENTS CONTENTS

9.2 Catmull-Rom Splines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

9.3 Quaternion Splining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
9.4 Other Splines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
9.5 Curves in Space ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

III Cameras and Rasterization 87

10 Projection 89
10.1 Pinhole Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
10.2 Basic Mathematical Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
10.3 Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
10.4 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

11 Depth 101
11.1 Visibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
11.2 Basic Mathematical Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
11.3 Near And Far . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
11.4 Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

12 From Vertex to Pixel 109

12.1 Clipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
12.2 Backface Culling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12.3 Viewport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
12.4 Rasterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

13 Varying Variables (Tricky) 119

13.1 Motivating The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
13.2 Rational Linear Interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

IV Pixels and Such 125

14 Materials 127
14.1 Basic Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

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CONTENTS CONTENTS

14.2 Diffuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

14.3 Shiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
14.4 Anisotropy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

15 Texture Mapping 137

15.1 Basic Texturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15.2 Normal Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
15.3 Environment Cube Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
15.4 Projector Texture Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
15.5 Multipass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

16 Sampling 149
16.1 Two Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
16.2 The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
16.3 The Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
16.4 Alpha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

17 Reconstruction 161
17.1 Constant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
17.2 Bilinear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
17.3 Basis functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

18 Resampling 167
18.1 Ideal Resampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
18.2 Blow up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
18.3 Mip Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

V Advanced Topics 173

19 Color 175
19.1 Simple Bio-Physical Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
19.2 Mathematical Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
19.3 Color Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

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CONTENTS CONTENTS

19.4 Bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

19.5 Reflection Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
19.6 Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
19.7 Non Linear Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

20 What is Ray Tracing 197

20.1 Loop Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
20.2 Intersection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
20.3 Secondary Rays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

21 Light (technical) 205

21.1 Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
21.2 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
21.3 Light Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
21.4 Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
21.5 Integration Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
21.6 More General Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

22 Geometric Modeling: Basic Intro 225

22.1 Triangle Soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
22.2 Meshes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
22.3 Implicit Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
22.4 Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
22.5 Parametric Patches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
22.6 Subdivision Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

23 Animation: Not Even an Introduction 237

23.1 Interpolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
23.2 Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
23.3 Human Locomotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

A Hello World 2D 245

A.1 APIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics vii

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CONTENTS CONTENTS

A.2 Main Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

A.3 Adding some Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
A.4 Adding a Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
A.5 What’s Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

B Affine Functions 261

B.1 2D Affine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
B.2 3D Affine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
B.3 Going Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
B.4 Going Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
B.5 Going Sideways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics viii

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Preface

This book has developed out of an introductory computer graphics course I have been
teaching at Harvard since 1996. Over the years I have had the pleasure of teaching
many amazing students. During class, these students have asked many good questions.
In light of these questions, I often realized that some of my explanations in class were
a bit sloppy and that I didn’t fully understand the topic I had just tried to explain. This
would often lead me to rethink the material and change the way I taught it the next
time around. Many of these ideas have found their way into this book. Throughout
the course of the book, I cover mostly standard material, but with an emphasis on
understanding some of the more subtle concepts involved.
In this book, we will introduce the basic algorithmic technology needed to produce
3D computer graphics. We will cover the basic ideas of how 3D shapes are represented
and moved around algorithmically. We will cover how a camera can be algorithmically
modeled turning this 3D data into a 2D image made up of a discrete set of dots or
pixels on a screen. Later in the book, we will also cover some more advanced topics
discussing the basics of color and light representations. We will also briefly introduce
some more advanced topics on light simulation for producing photo-realistic images,
on various ways of dealing with geometric representations and on producing animated
computer graphics.
In this book, we include material that is both above and below the API-hood. Much
of the material (especially early on) is stuff you simply need to know in order to do
3D computer graphics. But we also spend time to explain what is going on inside of
OpenGL. This is necessary to be a highly competent computer graphics programmer.
But also, it is simply fascinating to learn the hows and whys of our amazing computer
graphics computational infrastructure.
We will not cover the hardware and compiler aspects of computer graphics in this
book. We will also not focus on 2D computer graphics or human computer interfaces.
These topics are all interesting in their own rights but are fairly distinct from the algo-
rithmic side of 3D computer graphics.
In this book, we structure our explanations around OpenGL, a real-time “rasterization-
based” rendering environment. We have done this (rather than, say, a “ray-tracing-
based” environment) since so much of computer graphics is done in this setting. Any-
one, for example, who works in 3D video games needs to master this material (and

ix
 CHAPTER 0. PREFACE

more). We have chosen the OpenGL API (with the GLSL shading language) in partic-
ular, since it can be run on a wide variety of computing platforms.
This book is intended for upper level CS/math/physics undergraduate students with
at least a year of programming under their belt and at least a rudimentary understanding
of linear algebra.

For the Professor

In the following paragraphs I will describe some of the subtle issues that require some
care to get right and are often not taught clearly. I hope that students will master these
topics from this book.
Appendix A: We try to get up and running as painlessly as possible with a first
OpenGL program. Since we will be using a modern version of OpenGL, there is
thankfully not much API left to teach anymore. All OpenGL needs to do is man-
age the shader programs, vertex buffer objects and textures. We do not teach any of the
deprecated elements of old OpenGL, as they are not used in modern computer graphics
programming.
Chapters 2-4: In computer graphics we need to think about points and vectors
from both a coordinate-free and coordinate-full approach. We need to use coordinates
to obtain a concrete representation ultimately resulting in our rendered images. But
it is often important to represent and transform our points with respect to different
coordinate systems. As such it is important to

• Distinguish between a geometric point, and the coordinates used to represent that
point with respect to some frame.

• Use a notation to keep explicitly keep track of the basis used for a set of coordi-
nates.

• Distinguish in our notation between matrix equations that represent basis changes,
vs. matrix expressions that represent geometric transformations being applied to
points.

This ultimately leads to what we call the left-of rule, which allows us to interpret matrix
expressions and understand with respect to which basis a transformation is acting.
It is our hope that by mastering this explicit notational framework, a student can
easily figure out how to do complicated transformations. This is in contrast to the “try
lots of orderings and inverses of sequences of matrices until the program does the right
thing” approach. One loose inspiration for our approach is the manuscript [16] by Tony
DeRose.
Chapters 5 and 6: We describe an organized framework for dealing with frames in
computer graphics, and how this translates into simple 3D OpenGL code. In particular,
we derive useful ways to move objects around using a “mixed auxiliary frame”. This

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics x

S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

CHAPTER 0. PREFACE

allows us to, say, rotate an object correctly about its own center, but in directions that
correspond naturally to those on the screen.
Chapters 7: This is a simple and straightforward description of the quaternion rep-
resentation for rotations. We also derive how to properly combine quaternions and
translation vectors to define a rigid-body transformation data type that multiplies and
inverts just like matrices.
Chapter 8 is a simple and straightforward description of the trackball and arcball
rotation interface. We also show why the trackball interface is mouse-path-invariant.
Chapter 9: We do a quick and dirty introduction to Bezier and Catmull-Rom splines.
Chapters 10-13: In these chapters we describe how camera projection is modeled
using 4-by-4 matrices. We also describe the fixed function operations in OpenGL.
We pay special attention to deriving the correct formulas for interpolating the varying
variables. Some of the background on affine functions and interpolation are relegated
to Appendix B. Many of the subtleties here are described nicely in essays by Jim
Blinn [5]. In these chapters, we do not cover details about clipping or rasterization
algorithms.
Chapter 14 and 15: We give some simple example shaders for diffuse, shiny, and
anisotropic materials. We also point to more advanced real-time rendering techniques
such as multipass rendering and shadow mapping. These sections are admittedly too
brief. Presumably students pursuing more aggressive rendering projects will need to
learn a lot more about the ever-evolving techniques (and tricks) used in modern real-
time rendering.
Chapter 16-18: We cover the basics of why filtering is needed to compute discrete
images, and how basis functions are used to reconstruct continuous ones. In particular,
we show how these two concepts need to be combined to properly do filtering during
texture mapping (a la Paul Heckbert’s MS thesis [28].) We do not delve into the details
of Fourier analysis here as we think it would pull us a bit too far off the main narrative
(and in the end we use box filters anyway).
Chapter 19: We describe the basic theory of human color perception. From a math-
ematical perspective, we attempt to be clear about the very definition of what a color
is, and why such things form a linear space. A related treatment to ours can be found
in Feynman’s Lectures [20]. For many of the technical issues of color computations,
we rely on the Color FAQ of Charles Poynton [58].
Chapter 20: For completeness, we briefly describe ray tracing computations. As
this is not the focus of the course, we only touch on the topic.
Chapter 21: As an introduction to advanced topics in photo-realistic rendering,
we do a careful introduction to the physical units for describing light as well as the
reflection, rendering, and measurement equations. One thing we pay close attention to,
for example, is motivating why reflection is measured in the particular units used. A
good reference on these basics and more is Eric Veach’s PhD Thesis [71].
Chapter 22: We outline some of the ways that surfaces are modeled and represented

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics xi

S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

 CHAPTER 0. PREFACE

in computer graphics. This is a non-technical discussion that only just tries to give a
quick intro to this rich topic. We do go into enough detail to be able to implement
Catmull-Rom subdivision surfaces (assuming you have a mesh data structure handy),
as these are a quick and easy way to represent a broad family of surfaces.
Chapter 23: We outline some of the ways animation is done in computer graphics.
Again, this is a non-technical discussion that tries to give a quick intro to this rich topic.
One nice place to start for this material is Adrien Treuille’s course on its CMU website.
This book covers a bit more than what would be possible to do in a one-semester
course. It does not attempt to be an encyclopedic reference to all of the rich topics in
computer graphics theory and practice. Additionally, this book stays close to material
in wide use today. We do not cover the many current research results and ideas that
may one day become part of standard practice.

Thanks to...

During the development of this book over the last year, I received lots of helpful input
from Hamilton Chong, Guillermo Diez-Canas and Dylan Thurston.
Helpful advice also came from Julie Dorsey, Hugues Hoppe, Zoe Wood, Yuanchen
Zhu and Todd Zickler.
Other comments and assistance came from Gilbert Bernstein, Fredo Durand, Ladislav
Kavan, Michael Kazhdan and Peter-Pike Sloan.
During the development of the course, I was greatly assisted by Xiangfeng Gu,
Danil Kirsanov, Chris Mihelich, Pedro Sander and Abraham Stone.
Finally, over the years, the course has had many talented students acting as teach-
ing assistants. They have of course contributed in many ways to the evolution of this
material. These have included Brad Andalman, Keith Baldwin, Forrester Cole, Ashley
Eden, David Holland, Brad Kittenbrink, Sanjay Mavinkurve, Jay Moorthi, Doug Nac-
hand, Brian Osserman, Ed Park, David Ryu, Razvan Surdulescu and Geetika Tewari.

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics xii

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MIT Press, 2012

 Part I

Getting Started

1
Chapter 1

Introduction

Computer graphics is an amazing technology success story. The basic ideas, represen-
tations, algorithms and hardware approaches were forged in the 1960’s and 1970’s and
developed to maturity in the following two decades. By the mid 90’s computer graph-
ics techniques were reasonably mature, but their impact was still somewhat restricted
to “high end” applications such as scientific visualization on super-computers, and ex-
pensive flight simulators. Its hard to believe now, but many undergraduate CS majors
had no idea what 3D computer graphics even was!
The previous decade has finally seen the mass commodification of graphics. Every
modern PC is capable of producing high quality computer generated images, mostly
in the form of video games and virtual-life environments. The entire animation indus-
try has been transformed from its high end (e.g., Pixar films) down to daily children’s
television. For live-action movies, the field of special effects has been completely rev-
olutionized; viewers nowadays don’t flinch when they see the most amazing computer
generated special effects, it is simply expected.

1.1 OpenGL

OpenGL began as an API that implemented a very specific sequence of operations used
for doing 3D computer graphics. As the underlying hardware became cheaper, more
and more flexibility was put into the hardware and exposed to the user by the OpenGL
API. Over time, it has become feasible to fully control certain portions of the graphics
computation. The user does this by writing small special purpose programs, called
shaders, that are passed to and complied by the API. In OpenGL these shaders are
written in a C-like special purpose language called GLSL. As we will describe below,
the two main programmable portions are controlled by a vertex shader and a fragment
shader. These specific sections of the computation have been made programmable both
because there is great utility in giving the user flexibility in them, but also because this

3
 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

Figure 1.1: A cat head is described by a soup of triangles. Some of the vertices are
highlighted with black dots. From [64], c Eurographics and Blackwell Publishing
Ltd.

computation can be done using single instruction multiple data (SIMD) parallelism.
Data stored with each geometric vertex can be processed independently from the other
vertices. Likewise, computation to determine the color of one screen pixel can be
computed completely independently from the other pixels.
In a current OpenGL program, much (but not all) of the actual 3D graphics is done
by the shaders that you write, and are no longer really part of the OpenGL API itself.
In this sense, OpenGL is more about organizing your data and your shaders, and less
about 3D computer graphics. In the rest of this section, we will give an overview of
the main processing steps done by OpenGL. But we will also give some high level
descriptions of how the various shaders are typically used in these steps to implement
3D computer graphics.
In OpenGL we represent our geometry as a collection of triangles. On the one
hand, triangles are simple enough to be processed very efficiently by OpenGL, while
on the other hand, using collections of many triangles, we can approximate surfaces
with complicated shapes (see Figure 1.1). If our computer graphics program uses a
more abstract geometric representation, it must first be turned into a triangle collection
before OpenGL can draw the geometry.
Briefly stated, the computation in OpenGL determines the screen position for each
vertex of each of the triangles, figures out which screen dots, called pixels, lie within
each triangle, and then performs some computation to determine the desired color of
that pixel. We now walk through these steps in a bit more detail.
Each triangle is made up of 3 vertices. We associate some numerical data with
each vertex. Each such data item is called an attribute. At the very least, we need
to specify the location of the vertex (using 2 numbers for 2D geometry or 3 numbers
for 3D geometry). We can use other attributes to associate other kinds of data with our

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics 4

S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

Uniform Variables

Vertex Shader
Attributes gl_Position
Varying variables
Vertex buffer Assembler

Figure 1.2: Vertices are stored in a vertex buffer. When a draw call is issued each
of the vertices passes through the vertex shader. On input to the vertex shader, each
vertex (black) has associated attributes. On output, each vertex (cyan) has a value for
gl Position and for its varying variables.

vertices that we will use to determine their ultimate appearances. For example, we may
associate a color (using 3 numbers representing amounts of red, green and blue) with
each vertex. Other attributes might be used to represent relevant material properties
describing, say, how shiny the surface at the vertex is.
Transmitting the vertex data from the CPU to the graphics hardware (the GPU)
is an expensive process, so it is typically done as infrequently as possible. There are
specific API calls to transfer vertex data over to OpenGL which stores this data in a
vertex buffer
Once the vertex data has been given to OpenGL, at any subsequent time we can
send a draw call to OpenGL. This commands OpenGL to walk down the appropriate
vertex buffers and draw each vertex triplet as a triangle.
Once the OpenGL draw call has been issued, each vertex (i.e., all of its attributes)
gets processed independently by your vertex shader (See Figure 1.2). Besides the
attribute data, the shader also has access to things called uniform variables. These are
variables that are set by your program, but you can only set them in between OpenGL
draw calls, and not per vertex.
The vertex shader is your own program, and you can put whatever you want in
it. The most typical use of the vertex shader is to determine the final position of the
vertices on the screen. For example, a vertex can have its own abstract 3D position
stored as an attribute. Meanwhile, a uniform variable can be used to describe a virtual
camera that maps abstract 3D coordinates to the actual 2D screen. We will cover the
details of this kind of computation in Chapters 2- 6 and Chapter 10.
Once the vertex shader has computed the final position of the vertex on the screen, it
assigns this value to the the reserved output variable called gl Position. The x and
y coordinates of this variable are interpreted as positions within the drawing window.
The lower left corner of the window has coordinates (−1, −1), and the upper right
corner has coordinates (1, 1). Coordinates outside of this square represent locations

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics 5

S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

gl_Position Varying variables

Varying variables
Assembler

Rasterizer

Figure 1.3: The data in gl Position is used to place the three vertices of the triangle
on a virtual screen. The rasterizer figures out which pixels (orange) are inside the
triangle and interpolates the varying variables from the vertices to each of these pixels.

outside of the drawing area.

The vertex shader can also output other variables that will be used by the fragment
shader to determine the final color of each pixel covered by the triangle. These outputs
are called varying variables since as we will soon explain, their values can vary as we
look at the different pixels within a triangle.
Once processed, these vertices along with their varying variables are collected by
the triangle assembler, and grouped together in triplets.
OpenGL’s next job is to draw each triangle on the screen (see Figure 1.3). This step
is called rasterization. For each triangle, it uses the three vertex positions to place the
triangle on the screen. It then computes which of the pixels on the screen are inside
of this triangle. For each such pixel, the rasterizer computes an interpolated value for
each of the varying variables. This means that the value for each varying variable is set
by blending the three values associated with the triangle’s vertices. The blending ratios
used are related to the pixel’s distance to each of the three vertices. We will cover the
exact method of blending in Chapter 13. Because rasterization is such a specialized
and highly optimized operation, this step has not been made programmable.
Finally, for each pixel, this interpolated data is passed through a fragment shader
(see Figure 1.3). A fragment shader is another program that you write in the GLSL
language and hand off to OpenGL. The job of the fragment shader is to determine the
drawn color of the pixel based on the information passed to it as varying and uniform
variables. This final color computed by the fragment shader is placed in a part of GPU
memory called a framebuffer. The data in the framebuffer is then sent to the display,
where it is drawn on the screen.
In 3D graphics, we typically determine a pixel’s color by computing a few equa-
tions that simulate the way that light reflects off of some material’s surface. This calcu-
lation may use data stored in varying variables that represent the material and geometric
properties of the material at that pixel. It may also use data stored in uniform variables

Foundations of 3D Computer Graphics 6

S.J. Gortler

MIT Press, 2012

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